Protest and revenge – Iran wanted to send a farewell message to Khamenei.

“I want to say a word to President Trump and the world,” said Mojtaba, a gray-haired man who approached us with a message.

“Soon, you will see signs of revenge on top of the White House, and soon the color of the White House will be the color of my red flag.”

“Some of these calls are rituals,” a government official told me. “But the anger is real among hard-line critics within the establishment who oppose the new deal with the United States that killed our leader.”

Iran’s new leaders must now resume negotiations if they are to survive weeks of fighting, ease sanctions and freeze assets to get some much-needed relief from their dire financial situation.

Government supporters at the public reception, including what he said were 400 social media influencers – “Where are they from?” They came to foreigners to ask. They were often urged by visiting media to “tell the truth”.

But even in this crowd there were other voices. Two young Iranian women in black robes pulled us aside, saying that the “real voices of the revolution” had been heard in the protests that had taken place in these same streets months before.

Iran When the 1979 revolution buried the last of the first generation founders, the future path remains uncertain.

Almost four decades ago, I was in Iran at the funeral of its first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. In a frenzy of panic, his flimsy wooden casket shattered and his white-clad body plunged into the crowd.

Iran has entered a new chapter with its third leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not yet been seen in public since the airstrike that killed his father.

What his three brothers saw in the compound of the Grand Musalla Mosque where their father had been sleeping made the absence of it all the more striking.

Iranian officials say Israel continues to threaten to kill him as well.

“He’s in my heart and I hope he’s safe from Trump and Netanyahu,” said one woman who drove four hours from Hamadan with her family to join the rally.

But the organizers, who called it “the event of the century”, tried to raise other signs.

The biggest of all is the huge statue of a clenched fist that now stands tall in Enkalab or Revolution Square – the “Fist of Resistance” to send a message to enemies inside and outside of Iran that the Islamic Republic cannot be defeated.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent, Liz Doucet, reported from Tehran that none of her material would be used on the BBC’s Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran.